Walkabout: 139 Bainbridge Street, a Remarkable House With a Storied Past, Part 1

Read Part 2 and Part 3 of this story.

Much of the section of Stuyvesant Heights in the vicinity of Stuyvesant and Bainbridge avenues used to belong to the Prosser family. They came to this part of town in 1857 and bought up a huge swath of land from the Lefferts family.

Thomas Prosser, the family patriarch, made his fortune from iron and steel. During the London Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, Prosser met Alfred Krupp, a highly successful German iron manufacturer. The two men became friends for life.

American iron and steel manufacturing was no match for Germany’s in terms of output or technological capability at that point, and both men could see a lucrative business opportunity. A westward-growing America needed German steel for railroads and other production.

Prosser was soon signed up as the American agent for Krupp. That relationship lasted up until the beginning of World War I.

During the Civil War and the Railroad Age of the postwar years, Krupp iron was essential to a growing intercontinental economy. Thomas Prosser, and later his sons, got a piece of every dollar that Krupp made in the USA.

It wasn’t until America’s iron and steel production finally caught up in the 1880s that the flow started to slow down. Even then, they still did well. The Prosser family made millions.

Long before Stuyvesant Heights became a wealthy urban neighborhood in the late 19th and early 20th century, the Prossers built their family compounds there. Thomas Prosser and his wife had 10 children, many of whom built homes near their parents’ large suburban villa.

Period photographs show large Italianate mansions along Stuyvesant Avenue, offering only a peek into the real estate this family controlled. Today, only one Prosser house still stands: Thomas Prosser Jr.’s brick house on the eastern corner of Stuyvesant and Bainbridge, built in 1888.

By the end of the 19th century, developers were picking away at the available land and building expensive townhouses on the streets of Stuyvesant Heights. The family had begun to sell off parcels to developers and to the Embury Methodist Church, bringing the city to the Prosser family gates.

Thomas Prosser died in 1896. The family continued to sell their land, and one by one, began leaving the neighborhood for the tony new suburbs of Long Island and Westchester. The sounds of hammers and saws had replaced the birdsong and quiet of the Brooklyn ‘burbs.

One of the Prosser family’s land deals was struck with a prolific Brooklyn builder/developer named Walter F. Clayton. Among his Stuyvesant Heights purchases, he bought a swath of land that included the north side of Bainbridge Street, at Lewis Avenue.

In 1892, he began building a row of 33 fine speculative town houses on Bainbridge, utilizing the talents of Swedish architect Magnus Dahlander. The houses, which are all different, sold quickly.

Ten years and several projects later, Clayton developed the corner of Bainbridge and Stuyvesant. He and another prolific local developer, Eli Bishop, owned the 10 plots on the western side of Stuyvesant that stretched between Bainbridge and Decatur streets.

They decided to have one architect design the entire row. Dahlander had gone back to Sweden at this point, so they employed a friend and sometime-partner of his, fellow Swede Axel Hedman.

Architect Axel Hedman, Brooklyn Public Library

Hedman created a fine row of houses. This corner house, at 139 Bainbridge, was the showpiece of Clayton’s part of the row. It is complemented by a similar house for Eli Bishop on the opposite corner.

The houses were completed by 1903, and Walter Clayton put a big ad in the Brooklyn Eagle to advertise the corner house. It tells us a great deal about the house’s original details.

1903 ad, Brooklyn Eagle

The house was 22 by 75 feet, which included the large extension. The lot was 95 feet deep. The front was Indiana limestone, the side and back grey mottled Tiffany brick.

The ad says the house had 16 rooms and two bathrooms. The latter had porcelain and nickel plumbing and beautifully tiled walls and floors. The garden level had a billiard room, the kitchen, laundry and butler’s rooms, a tiled icebox and nine closets.

Upstairs on the parlor floor there was a drawing room, library, foyer, butler’s pantry and formal dining room. That room had “massive oak beams” and a paneled ceiling. The first bedroom level had three large bedrooms, a full bathroom, three wash basins with Tennessee marble and nickel plumbing, and nine closets.

The top floor had four bedrooms, a full bathroom, a storeroom and “numerous closets.” The house was heated by hot water, had electric and gas combination fixtures, a dumbwaiter, and a burglar alarm. It was wired for electricity, and had plate glass windows.

Clayton’s ad read “This house was built by days’ work, equal to any work built by order, is a perfect dream, and needs to be seen to be appreciated.” It was some house.

The family of Francis M. Sutton agreed. He was the first owner of 139 Bainbridge Street. He and his wife Louise lived here with their three children, Sherwood, Doris and Francis Jr.

Like all of the other new homeowners in the neighborhood, Sutton was well off. He was the head of an export company, Francis F. Sutton & Co. His offices were at 17 Battery Place in Manhattan, and the company had large accounts in South Africa and Europe.

The family was quite active in society events, and were prominent members of the Tompkins Avenue Congregational Church. Sutton was on several committees involved with improving Brooklyn’s docks, while his wife was active in charity work with the church.

In 1907, Sutton’s name appeared in an ad for Rainier Automobiles. He was one of a select few prominent Brooklynites to own one. However, by 1910, he had switched to a Cadillac. There were so few cars in Brooklyn at the time, the ownership of one made the papers.

1907 Rainier automobile ad in Brooklyn Life

Sutton traveled a lot. The papers often noted his trips to South Africa, Europe and elsewhere. Perhaps that was one of the reasons that life in the beautiful Sutton home was less than ideal. In 1911, Mrs. Sutton filed for divorce.

When society folk had messy marital problems, it became big news. So when Mrs. Sutton went to court to get a divorce from her husband in 1912, it made the front page of the Eagle. That story and the continuation of the remarkable history of this house, next time.